The Stars Get Red And Other Stories
by 1shot
Summary: "Sorry," mutters Damon, and he means it for a lot of things, and he would like to add, sincerely, that he really wishes he were dead right now. / Commentfic repository re: the Brothers Salvatore and their issues with one E. Gilbert. Language, gore.
1. The Stars Get Red And Oh the Night

_A/N: So I probably shouldn't browse comment fic on Livejournal, because sometimes it is possible that I write random things instead of working. The prompt was "Elena/Damon, my last confession: 'I love you' never felt like any blessing." Takes place immediately after the season 2 finale._

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THE STARS GET RED (AND OH THE NIGHT)

If there's one thing Damon Salvatore is sure of, it's that he shouldn't be held responsible for stupid shit he said while he was dying.

The cure leaves a taste like roasted cayenne. The fire in all his veins is fading to a throbbing ache in his left arm. He reeks of dull copper sweat; the chill of it soaks his clothes, sets his hair to dripping in his eyes. He swings his legs off the bed and rises. Katherine is maybe five seconds gone - he can still feel her on his skin - but he lurches half a step toward the door and Elena whispers, "Don't."

Her face is full of doubt and her eyes are full of Stefan; still, her outstretched palm says 'not you, too.'

So he stays, like a dog at heel, and he closes his eyes and does his level best not to vomit. He likes this rug. He can't spare any more blood.

"Elena," he says.

She interrupts, "I don't," and "... are you okay?" There's something breakable and desperate in her voice. He recognizes it; the exact same tension is constricting at his throat.

Damon stands still, waiting for strength. He firms his shoulders, because Elena is watching him (and he's sneering at himself for doing things because Elena is watching him, but if he's a dog, he's Pavlov's). "Yeah," he says, belatedly. "Miracle of Saint Stefan."

"Don't," she says again, and he wants to snap _I don't want your pity_ and he wants to sweep her up and kiss her (_really_ kiss her) and okay, he wants to slice his fangs into her just a little bit. He is what he is.

(Memory: the taste of her. His teeth in her flesh, the hot rush of her blood, the scent of her tangled hair.)

(She even smells like Katherine.)

He doesn't think about crossing the room; he just does it, and he knows he's gone too fast because Elena's breath hisses and he has to rest a hand, unbalanced, on her shoulder. She's rigid but all he wants to do is shove her hair aside, stare at the clotting telltale wounds beneath the side of her jaw.

"It's okay," she says, and Damon doesn't say anything and he sure as hell doesn't meet her eyes. His thumb brushes against her neck. Elena shivers, and her fingers close around his wrist. They hold there for several tenuous seconds - he knows her stare is wide and wary. He fixates on the pulse in her throat, and the dried dark smudges of blood.

He remembers her face. His betrayal in her parted lips.

Damon drops his hand and turns away - the room is steady now around him. He is starving and wet. "We'll get him back," he states, simply. "Then I can kill him."

It's a flat joke; Damon blames it on his continuing urge to puke.

Elena twists her hands around that little glass bottle, crimson stains coagulating in the bottom.

"Sorry," he mutters, and he means it for a lot of things, and he would like to add, sincerely, that he really wishes he were dead right now. Silence hangs heavy and ungainly between them. Elena licks her lips, and Damon wonders if they taste of him. He adds, "Look -"

He doesn't know how to end that sentence. He's staring at her fingers.

"I'm going to take a shower," is what he goes with, finally. He suspects the sheer mundanity may kill him after all.

For a long moment, she doesn't respond. All he sees is her hand clenching. He wants to say _I get it_ and _look, nevermind_ and _fucking Stefan_ and _oh fuck, Stefan_ but every choice would shatter something. The air is too fragile.

Elena draws a breath, lets it out. "Okay," she says. The tightness is still there, but there's steel beneath it, and something else. "Actually - okay. But make some stupid innuendo about it, first."

Damon isn't sure he's heard her. "What?"

He's managed wittier responses. But he's startled enough to flick his gaze to her face, to the darkness of her even regard. He sees the concern but he can't tell if the crippling guilt belongs to both of them, or is just his own reflection.

"Make a joke," instructs Elena again. Her fingers are tight on the bottle. Her stare begs him, but she is offering, too.

A long beat passes before he understands, and - oh god, he adores her.

Damon straightens. He slicks back his disgusting hair with an almost-steady hand; he offers his best, most rakish smile. Maybe it's a little shaky. They both pretend otherwise.

"Three more seconds and I start stripping," he purrs. "Gonna scrub my back, or would you rather just watch?"

She blinks back salt wetness, but the corner of her mouth nearly quirks.

(_I forgive you_.)

He raises an eyebrow - familiar, mute challenge.

(_I love you_.)

Elena's sigh is sharp and put-upon. She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling - "_God_, Damon," - and turns precisely on her heel, flouncing (it is a distinct flounce) from the room. The scent of blood goes with her. He can hear her on her phone as she paces down the hall, the quick soft sound of her fingertips texting.

The night is thin and gratitude is a sucking, pathetic hole between his ribs.

A minute later, he's dropped a filthy pile of black and denim on the floor. Water streams down over his shoulders, burning, and Damon is still - so to speak - alive.

Elena's voice filters to him from somewhere downstairs. He can't make out the words, but the raw edge is clear.

He thuds his forehead against the ceramic tile, once, twice, methodical - but gently. He tries not to break anything more.


	2. Fine Grind

_(A/N: Prompt was Stefan and the music video for Oldelaf's "Le Cafe." Apologies that I cannot provide the link; it's on Youtube, though. This takes place between seasons 2 and 3.)_

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FINE GRIND

The first time Elena finds Stefan is in Savannah.

He isn't surprised - not really - because it hasn't been long enough, and Klaus hasn't brought them far enough (and if there's anything Stefan knows, it's how tenacious Elena can be.)

So he's not startled when he turns, sees her staring at him from across the darkened bar. The air is acrid, reeks of cheap beer and sweat. Klaus is grinning madly in the corner, his arm around some stupid punk and his lips whispering promises of power, his teeth so close to nicking stubbled skin.

Stefan bites his lip and tastes the waning edge of copper. He is ragged and hungry; he hasn't slept in days, but there's human blood rushing through his veins - stolen, exquisitely raw - and he's too on edge and he can't sit still and there she is.

His heart constricts at her black, blank stare - at the dark waterfall of her hair.

So he shoves himself away from the bar, and then he's across the room, where he can loom over her and she can step back, half-tripping. He tastes her gasp and the sudden hint of her uneasiness. "E-le-na," he drawls - slow, playful, because fuck it if he can't do anything Damon can do - but all he gets out of her is the partial breath of a sob.

It's a kick in the gut, but then he remembers he hasn't cleaned the stains off his shirt from yesterday (or maybe the day before), and maybe he isn t really good at being Stefan right now.

Still, it stings him when she stumbles back. Her hip hits the table and then he has her by the wrist. She pulls, a sharp instant later, and he has her by the throat.

(He doesn't mean to.)

The life in her veins is hot and heavy and sweet. He drinks her down as her heels drum against the floor, a staccato counterpoint to Klaus's laughter.

(Stefan is too rough; the fine joints of her shoulder separate beneath his hands. He is sorry, though. He puts her together again.)

.

She steps from an alley in Charleston, and Stefan is about to follow Klaus through gilded doors but he stops, arrested. Elena's dress is red and the folds of it fall lightly from one shoulder, from the dusky smooth skin above her collarbone.

He would cross miles just for the delicate turn of her ankle. He knows she has come to seduce him away - knows that Klaus will be angry - and yet he drifts to the side, letting the door close ahead as he measures his pace across the cracked sidewalk.

It is a cloudy night; her face is already half ghost.

"Elena," he murmurs, reaching for her arm - he is gentle and deliberate. (He is still a little guilty about the last time.)

But her lips twist (he sees, suddenly, the grime beneath his nails) and her nose wrinkles (he smells of lust and bile) so he is forced to clamp a palm over her mouth, drag her back into the shadows before she can scream.

She bites him.

It hurts.

He snaps her neck by reflex; after that, there is nothing to do but drink. "Stay away," he tells her slack mouth, sadly. "I'm not safe for you."

He leaves her like a discarded flag, the edges of her skirt torn and drifting. She is mostly in one piece.

.

In Charlotte, Stefan almost falls for the ruse until he realizes that Elena s eyes are not her own. She has stolen his brother's gaze; it is gleaming and ice bright.

He drives his fingers deep in the sockets of her skull, careful and precise; he leaves the bloody blue orbs staring on the remnants of her chest when he walks away, and he is not sorry for that one.

She tastes faintly of dark roasted espresso. It lingers in his throat for days.

.

He almost thinks he has found Katherine near Norfolk, where the salt tang of the sea drifts on the night winds; she has Katherine's walk, Katherine's feral grin, and when he slides to the sand beside her on the dark beach, she tosses her head and is not afraid. The line of her throat is arching and exposed.

Katherine, though, would not yield so easily; Katherine would not lie so still and cool, with her fine fingers broken and her entrails shining in the starlight.

"Elena," says Stefan, honestly surprised; he lifts the wet loop of her intestine and tucks it carefully back in place. Her blood is a river of power through him; he is dizzy with the heat of it. Grateful, he fixes the loose strands of her hair.

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Somewhere north of Baltimore, fire crackling beneath the screams, Klaus says, "I believe this one is for you," and shoves Elena into Stefan's unprepared grasp. She shrieks; her hands are too quick, too clingy, and Stefan shatters her arm in two places when he sinks his fangs into her wrist. Her pulse is a fountain in his starving mouth.

He leaves her in chunks on the dry grass, bones white against the ruin of her broken flesh. He has no chance to reassemble her; Klaus pulls him away. The flames are rising and there is no time.

.

Stefan writes the names of all his victims. He keeps it in his pocket, a folded piece of paper that grows more ragged with every dawn.

_Elena_  
><em>Elena <em>  
><em>Elena <em>  
><em>KatherElena <em>  
><em>Elena <em>  
><em>Elena <em>  
><em>Elena <em>  
><em>EleKatherinElena <em>  
><em>Elena <em>  
><em>Elena<em>

Sometimes when Klaus is speaking (all secrets and pride), Stefan tunes out and lets his fingers run up and down the edge of the paper, remembering Elena's milky dead eyes and the way her ribs shattered and spread. The way he folded her back together, like an accordion, like an old quilt.

He is sorry, he wants to tell her.

_He is sorry._

(She is rich and sparkling in his mouth.)


	3. Best Unspoken

_(A/N: Prompt was Elena/Damon, you said that you could let it go, and I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know. Takes place mid-season 3.)_

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BEST UNSPOKEN

This is how the conversation goes.

They are sitting together on the couch, in the boarding house, and the night outside is dark and chill but they are warmed by the roaring fireplace. Damon has one arm stretched out just behind Elena's shoulders, not quite touching; in this manner, they pretend that he is comfortable, and that they are friends. The light of the flames glistens orange and gold on his death-white skin, darkens the shadows in the hollows of his cheekbones, and when he sips his rye, ice clinking, Elena watches the way the highlights hint at the skull beneath his perfectly angular calm.

He slides her a look, sidelong and impenetrable, and before she knows she is about to say anything at all, Elena blurts, "Do you think about her?"

Damon goes very still; blue eyes, pale as the ice in his glass, go briefly wide before he cuts his gaze deliberately to the fireplace and lowers his drink to his knee. "Who?" he asks, as if he has no idea. The deception is so patent that Elena cannot stop herself from puffing air between her lips.

"You watch me sometimes," she says. "I mean, I look like her. Obviously. I just ..." Something tics in his jaw, but it is not enough to dissuade her. "I know you can't always tell the difference," she finishes, in a quiet rush, and she is aware suddenly that Damon's hand has gone tight against the back of the couch, just next to her left ear.

"I can tell the difference," he says, simply. She doesn't say anything, so after a couple of long seconds he lets his lips quirk. "Eventually."

"Damon, it's -"

"A stupid question. Don't be a girl."

She stiffens at that, and straightens - away from him, from his not-quite-possessive arm, from whatever she is supposed to be in this little domestic scene. "That's not an answer," she says, arms folding, "and also, this isn't Twilight, okay. You don't get to patronize me."

"Elena -" Damon flashes another one of those glances in her direction; this one is irritated, his eyebrows lowering, and then a frozen moment passes where Elena knows he wants to say something else cutting but doesn't, because it's her, because he's making exceptions.

Her fingers clench on her jeans, and Damon emits a pointed sigh. Resettling himself on the couch, a minute shift of his weight, he stretches a foot toward the fire and returns his attention again, determinedly, to the crackling logs. Very mildly, he asks, "Do you think about Stefan?"

He doesn't look at her.

Elena is silent.

Damon sips his drink.

Eventually, Elena slides two voiceless inches to the side and feels Damon go taut as she nudges a shoulder into his ribs. With a swallow, she settles herself. He is thin, solid, tense; pressed into him, she finds herself abruptly unable to breathe. It is a moment's stricken uncertainty, and she does not move.

When he lowers his arm over her shoulders, it's with the delicate caution of a man who is robbing a tomb. "I watch you for other reasons," he says, finally, but Elena says nothing, and he does not offer anything else.

Before them, the fire sparks.


End file.
